February 22nd, 2010 Mark Brown
Curator says first major exhibition devoted to British artist since 1988 will show that there is more to him than his female figures
Henry Moore, Britain's best known and most important sculptor, is often seen as a buttoned-up Yorkshireman whose work is as easygoing and safe as it gets. But a new exhibition opening tomorrow reveals his demons: this is a man much darker, edgier and more complex than we realise, say curators.
Tate Britain tomorrow opens the most important exhibition of Moore works for a generation. It hopes to surprise those who think they know Moore – and he is mostly known for his enormous postwar outdoor sculptures – as well as introducing him to a whole new audience.
More than 150 works, including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings, have been gathered for what is also one of Tate Britain's longest exhibitions in recent memory – it will run for almost six months. A spokeswoman said it was "an experiment" and the hope was the show would attract more overseas visitors during the summer.
Chris Stephens, the show's co-curator, called it reassessment, or "a revisiting". He said the exhibition was setting out to show there is much more to the artist than his easily recognisable gently rounded female figures and abstract forms. Familiarity with the artist had almost bred contempt, he said. "We think we know Henry Moore because he is still so visible and recognisable and also still so popular."
Instead Moore was producing art that was informed by the trauma and horrors of the first world war. And when it came to sex, he was sculpting pieces that were wholly sexually driven and erotically charged. "The sort of things we accept without question about Francis Bacon or Picasso but they also run through Henry Moore's work as well."
Stephens believes Moore's first world war experiences – three quarters of his battalion died and was gassed at the battle of Cambrai – had a profound effect on his art. It brought a darkness and psychological complexity to his work.
Moore, son of a Yorkshire coal mining engineer, was always reluctant to talk specifically about what informed his art, he was from a class and generation who just did not go on about their emotions or their feelings.
After the war Moore became a superstar artist, creating huge works in places like Harlow and Stevenage that were emblematic of the new welfare state, of the reconstruction of Britain.
24 years after his death, he remains popular but not as regarded as some believe he should be. "The conundrum is that he is still incredibly popular, incredibly familiar," said Stephens, "and yet he somehow lacks a critical respect. We wanted to return to what was it about Moore that made him the most important sculptor of the modern age."
Moore may be one of Britain's greatest artists yet the last big show devoted to his work was a memorial show at the Royal Academy in 1988, two years after his death.
For exhibitions at the Tate – an institution Moore is bound up with and to which he donated a large amount of work – you have to go back to a drawings retrospective in 1977, his 70th birthday retrospective in 1968 and before that the 1951 Festival of Britain retrospective.
"It is a generation since his last major show yes and often it takes a generation," said Stephens. "You need a lapse in time sometimes, it allows you to bring new ideas and ways of looking at art."
Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation, said: "It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most important Henry Moore exhibition in the 33-year life of the foundation. It is true that we've done exhibitions in the last three decades all over the world, in China, Brazil, the United States but this is unquestionably the most important show in the last 30 years. It is not a retrospective and it's all the more exciting and intelligent for that."
The exhibition also asserts that Moore, as Official War Artist during the second world war, produced drawings – known as the Shelter Drawings – that he claimed were made from his own observance when, in fact, they were copied from photographs in Picture Post.
While this makes it seem that Moore was a dissembler, according to Stephens the revelations enhance Moore's reputation even more. He might not have wanted it known but by reproducing the photographs he was using mechanical reproduction techniques that artists such as Bacon and Richard Hamilton used.
• Henry Moore, Tate Britain 24 February – 8 August
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February 22nd, 2010 Mark Brown
Curator says first major exhibition devoted to British artist since 1988 will show that there is more to him than his female figures
Henry Moore, Britain's best known and most important sculptor, is often seen as a buttoned-up Yorkshireman whose work is as easygoing and safe as it gets. But a new exhibition opening tomorrow reveals his demons: this is a man much darker, edgier and more complex than we realise, say curators.
Tate Britain tomorrow opens the most important exhibition of Moore works for a generation. It hopes to surprise those who think they know Moore – and he is mostly known for his enormous postwar outdoor sculptures – as well as introducing him to a whole new audience.
More than 150 works, including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings, have been gathered for what is also one of Tate Britain's longest exhibitions in recent memory – it will run for almost six months. A spokeswoman said it was "an experiment" and the hope was the show would attract more overseas visitors during the summer.
Chris Stephens, the show's co-curator, called it reassessment, or "a revisiting". He said the exhibition was setting out to show there is much more to the artist than his easily recognisable gently rounded female figures and abstract forms. Familiarity with the artist had almost bred contempt, he said. "We think we know Henry Moore because he is still so visible and recognisable and also still so popular."
Instead Moore was producing art that was informed by the trauma and horrors of the first world war. And when it came to sex, he was sculpting pieces that were wholly sexually driven and erotically charged. "The sort of things we accept without question about Francis Bacon or Picasso but they also run through Henry Moore's work as well."
Stephens believes Moore's first world war experiences – three quarters of his battalion died and was gassed at the battle of Cambrai – had a profound effect on his art. It brought a darkness and psychological complexity to his work.
Moore, son of a Yorkshire coal mining engineer, was always reluctant to talk specifically about what informed his art, he was from a class and generation who just did not go on about their emotions or their feelings.
After the war Moore became a superstar artist, creating huge works in places like Harlow and Stevenage that were emblematic of the new welfare state, of the reconstruction of Britain.
24 years after his death, he remains popular but not as regarded as some believe he should be. "The conundrum is that he is still incredibly popular, incredibly familiar," said Stephens, "and yet he somehow lacks a critical respect. We wanted to return to what was it about Moore that made him the most important sculptor of the modern age."
Moore may be one of Britain's greatest artists yet the last big show devoted to his work was a memorial show at the Royal Academy in 1988, two years after his death.
For exhibitions at the Tate – an institution Moore is bound up with and to which he donated a large amount of work – you have to go back to a drawings retrospective in 1977, his 70th birthday retrospective in 1968 and before that the 1951 Festival of Britain retrospective.
"It is a generation since his last major show yes and often it takes a generation," said Stephens. "You need a lapse in time sometimes, it allows you to bring new ideas and ways of looking at art."
Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation, said: "It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most important Henry Moore exhibition in the 33-year life of the foundation. It is true that we've done exhibitions in the last three decades all over the world, in China, Brazil, the United States but this is unquestionably the most important show in the last 30 years. It is not a retrospective and it's all the more exciting and intelligent for that."
The exhibition also asserts that Moore, as Official War Artist during the second world war, produced drawings – known as the Shelter Drawings – that he claimed were made from his own observance when, in fact, they were copied from photographs in Picture Post.
While this makes it seem that Moore was a dissembler, according to Stephens the revelations enhance Moore's reputation even more. He might not have wanted it known but by reproducing the photographs he was using mechanical reproduction techniques that artists such as Bacon and Richard Hamilton used.
• Henry Moore, Tate Britain 24 February – 8 August
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February 18th, 2010 Mark Brown
Exhibition by trailblazing Israeli-born designer, architect and artist opens in London, his hometown for more than 35 years
There are bookshelves that bounce and roll, cutlery that pirouettes, a chandelier that you can text and chairs. Lots and lots of chairs. In what may be one of the most comfortable exhibitions of recent years, Britain's first major Ron Arad retrospective opens tomorrow.
The Barbican's art gallery in London is following up major shows it has held on Corbusier and Alvar Aalto by devoting three months to a designer, architect and artist still very much alive and working. Arad, who was born in Israel but has been based in London for more than 35 years, said he hoped anyone "interested in things" would visit.
The head of art galleries at the Barbican, Kate Bush, said: "We want to pay tribute to Ron Arad's very special place in the world of design. He is an incredibly important figure and this exhibition lays out his vision and his process as it has evolved over 30 years."
The show is divided into sections with names such as Volumising, Rolling, Superforming and Scavenging, where one of Arad's most celebrated chairs – the Rover chair, which uses a car seat salvaged from a scrap yard – is exhibited.
Then there is the Failing section, displaying designs that weren't taken up, or were misconceived. That includes the "table that eats chairs" in which chairs can be folded underneath the table top. "I think it was too complicated for the manufacturer," said the show's curator Lydia Yee, "but Ron's still confident that someone will come along."
There have been recent Arad shows at the Pompidou in Paris and Moma in New York, but the one in London was completely different, said its curator, Lydia Yee. "Ron wanted to do something new in his home town and we wanted … to show his interest in new materials and in new technologies."
There is a crystal chandelier called Lolita which has more than a thousand embedded LED lights and its own mobile number to which one can send texts, which are then displayed.
Arad and his studio have also created mechanical tricks to show off some of the pieces such as a long moving platform for bookshelves called "reinventing the wheel". The idea is that you can roll your bookshelves where you would like them – perfect for the indecisive – but there is a wheel within the wheel so the books remain upright.
For many, Arad will be best known for his chairs, many of which are on display and which are most definitely not for sitting on. A large section of the gallery will, however, contain chairs where visitors can take the weight off their feet and – should they wish – play table tennis on a stainless steel ping pong table designed by Arad to suit his game.
Posted in Architecture, Art, Art and design, Culture, Design, Exhibitions, Installation, Life and style, News, Sculpture, The Guardian, UK news | Comments Off
February 17th, 2010 Mark Brown
London gallery displays finest of Renaissance artist's drawings for his friends, with loans from the Vatican and the Queen
Some of the most magnificent drawings ever executed – physical manifestations of Michelangelo's love and infatuation for a handsome and intelligent teenage boy – will on Thursday go on display as a group for the first time.
The groundbreaking show at the Courtauld gallery in London, with loans from the Vatican and the Queen, is essentially a joyously gay love story.
The drawings were done by Michelangelo when he was about 57. In the winter of 1532 the artist met Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman nobleman celebrated for his dreamboat good looks, his superior intellect and his gracious manners, and fell head over heels in love with him.
Stephanie Buck, the show's curator, said it was, at heart, an extraordinary romance. "These drawings were meant to be looked at and studied, people looked at them with magnifying glasses and mirrors for hours and hours. With these drawings you can't reach higher."
The exhibition is built around The Dream of Human Life (Il Sogno, or The Dream) which was bequeathed to the Courtauld in 1978 by one of the century's most important collectors, Count Antoine Seilern. It is considered one of the finest of all Renaissance drawings. In it Michelangelo focuses on the beauty of the body, depicting a nude young man being roused from sleep, and human vices, by a winged spirit.
Buck is in no doubt The Dream is one of Michelangelo's "presentation drawings" made for Cavalieri in 1533. Others on display include The Punishment of Tityus, The Fall of Phaeton, The Bacchanal of Children, and The Rape of Ganymede. They would have been seen by the pope and the Medicis and on one level were teaching Cavalieri how to draw, and perhaps offering moral guidance. But they were also expressions of the artist's consuming love for the boy.
Michelangelo as an artist was at the height of his powers and fame, and almost deified. The quality is indisputable. In 1568 his biographer, Giorgio Vasari, called the works "drawings the like of which have never been seen".
Buck said it was unclear how old Cavalieri was when Michelangelo fell for him. The Courtauld research put him at between 16 and 17, she said.
The exhibition also shows that it was more than just physical infatuation. Michelangelo clearly held Cavalieri's intellect in high regard. Alongside The Fall of Phaeton is an earlier and different version on which the artist writes, saying that if the sketch does not please Cavalieri he should say so.
"The point is," said Buck, "that Cavalieri, although he was so young, must have played quite a role in the making of it because he was able to criticise it and send it back."
The Vatican has also lent for the exhibition Michelangelo's original poems, which he composed in the early stages of the friendship. Again there is little doubt as to how he felt. One reads:
"You know that I know, my lord, that you know that
I come here to enjoy you nearer at hand, and you
know that I know that you know who I really am: why
then this hesitation to greet each other, even now?
If the hope that you give me is true, if the great desire
that has been granted me is true, let the wall raised
up between these two be broken down …"
The Courtauld show is already attracting considerable academic interest, and it represents the first time that The Dream has been exhibited alongside the other presentation drawings. The last time they were together (without The Dream) was in 1988 for exhibitions in Paris and Washington.
The debate about Michelangelo and his sexuality continues. He never made any secret of his love of male beauty – just look at David – but he always maintained it was a celibate love, a platonic love. That goes, too, with Cavalieri.
Buck said: "The whole idea, which he repeats in his letters and poems, is that he doesn't want to chase Cavalieri off. He speaks of his physical desire but it is a chaste love and he is not approaching him in a manner that would make it difficult for Cavalieri."
Having said that, Buck believes Michelangelo was certainly gay and that he would have slept with men. But Cavalieri was from such a high-ranking family in papal Rome that the two of them going to bed was never going to happen. Yet Cavalieri, who later married and had children, was clearly honoured to be held so highly in the affections of Michelangelo; they stayed close friends. He was with Michelangelo at his deathbed and was later instrumental in ensuring unfinished projects were completed.
Of course the one question that wants to be answered is what did the boy look like, how handsome was he? "We know there was a portrait of Cavalieri but it is lost," said Buck. "Unfortunately."
Posted in Art, Art and design, Culture, Exhibitions, Michelangelo, Museums, News, The Courtauld Institute of Art, The Guardian, UK news | Comments Off
February 16th, 2010 Haroon Siddique
50 landscape and abstract paintings by Silence of the Lambs actor go on show at Mayfair's Gallery 27
The first British exhibition of paintings by the Oscar-winning Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins opens in London tomorrow . The 50 landscape and abstract paintings by the Silence of the Lambs actor, who has exhibited throughout the US, will be displayed at Gallery 27 in Mayfair, central London, until Saturday before moving to The Dome in Edinburgh for four days on 2 March. Hopkins began painting in 2002, paints every day in his Malibu studio and "takes his art very seriously", according to exhibition promoter Jonathan Poole. Five limited-edition prints will be available for purchase.
Posted in Anthony Hopkins, Art, Art and design, Culture, Exhibitions, Film, London, News, The Guardian, UK news | Comments Off
February 9th, 2010 Jonathan Jones
Goodwin's quietly powerful portraits of London Underground staff capture the mystery and melancholy of life in the capital
Ordinary faces look back at you from posters at London Underground stations, drawn in intense black lines, almost like forests of wiring. There is a hum of represssed energy, as if you were approaching power lines on a wasteland. There is also a solitude, a silence in the portraits that reach out, with their eyes, to you the stranger ... and then you've moved on, carried by the crowd, the connection is lost.
Dryden Goodwin's portraits of London Transport staff are the latest – and some might say the most conventional – in the series of artworks commissioned by Art on the Underground. Goodwin made drawings of 60 underground workers. They're engaged, emotional, hardworking sketches. For those who need a bit of video to make them feel they are seeing some proper modern art, he has also made films of the drawing sessions. For me, though, what's interesting is the vision of London this artist is pursuing; these drawings continue the themes of solitude in the crowd that made his 2008 show at the Photographers' Gallery so quietly powerful.
It is an old-fashioned London he is drawing, more reminiscent of the 1950s city of a Frank Auerbach than the happening metropolis of now. Both Londons are mythic, of course. There is no one, fixed truth of London; this city is both a heaven and a hell, depending on your point view. But in contemporary culture, the point of view is almost always remorselessly upbeat and promotional. Goodwin's London is a more melancholy, mysterious place whose streets, in these winter days, we actually seem to walk. They're gripping, thought-provoking and evocative of life in the big city.
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February 5th, 2010 Art and design: Art | guardian.co.uk
Late author of Jurassic Park left £20m worth of paintings including works by Jasper Johns, Picasso and Lichtenstein
Artworks collected by the late Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton and valued at £20m are being showcased to the British public before going under the hammer. Among the items is one of Jasper Johns' Flag paintings, on public view in London for the first time in 20 years. The influential work is the highlight of a Christie's sale on 11 May.
The auction house is also unveiling Femme et Filettes by Pablo Picasso, Studio Painting (Combine) by Robert Rauschenberg, and Girl in Water by Roy Lichtenstein.
The public viewing will take place at Christie's, King Street, from tomorrow until Friday 12 February.
Crichton's novels have sold more than 150m copies worldwide, including The Andromeda Strain, Timeline, The Lost World and State of Fear. He wrote and directed classic films such as The First Great Train Robbery, starring Sir Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
Posted in Art, Books, Culture, Michael Crichton, News, UK news, guardian.co.uk | Comments Off
February 4th, 2010 Esther Addley
Beloved centre of London's alternative art scene for a decade is set for demolition, but six-metre Banksy mural to be preserved
Pete Doherty used to host its poetry nights, the band Hot Chip formed there, and artists from Banksy to Gavin Turk have adorned its walls and propped up its bar.
But now the Foundry, an east London gallery and pub that for more than a decade has served as a focal point for the area's alternative art scene, is set to be demolished after the site's owners drew up plans for an 18-storey hotel and retail complex.
Hackney council last night approved plans to pull down the building which houses the much-loved if rather ramshackle space in Shoreditch close to the edge of the City, despite protests from the gallery's founders that it performs a vital artistic function in the London borough.
In what its supporters regard as a particularly ironic twist, the council intends to salvage a wall painted with one of the biggest Banksy murals in Britain, even as the remainder of the building is demolished. The planned redevelopment, part of the Art'otel chain, will also incorporate gallery and retail space and a spa.
Foundry founders Tracey and Jonathan Moberly expect to be evicted by April, when the site will be cleared for the construction of a circular tower block by award-winning architects Squire and Partners. The Moberlys said they were "pretty resigned" to the fact that the art space would close, and had no objections to the conduct of the architects or the developers, Park Plaza hotels. "That's fair enough. This isn't our building, we've been renting, and they have been supportive in helping us look for another premises," said Tracey Moberly.
But the couple are angry with Hackney council, which they accused of refusing to designate the Foundry as an artistic space, which they say would require the council to seek to resettle it in other premises, preferring to refer to it in planning documents only as a pub.
The council has also specified its intention in the planning officer's report for the "safe removal and retention of 'Banksy' art work" – a six-metre high painting of a rat with a knife and fork over which the building's owners have constructed a protective wooden covering. A spokeswoman for Squire and Partners said: "The aim of the client and design team is to permanently locate the artworks on site, in one of the public galleries at ground floor – this is to be agreed with Hackney council."
A council spokesman said it would not comment on any aspect of the development ahead of the planning meeting.
The Moberlys, an artist and a former art publisher, opened the gallery in the former bank building in the late 1990s, intending it to be a place where any artist, regardless of experience, could exhibit free of charge. The couple opened a bar on the ground floor to cover their expenses, but have always considered its two basement galleries and performance spaces, linked by graffiti adorned walls, to be the building's main focal point. They have forged long-standing links with artists in Russia and Haiti and regularly display works by international artists.
The comedian and activist Mark Thomas, who has performed there, said the Foundry was "one of the most truly artistic spaces in London". He described its battered sofas and graffitied walls as "the fixtures and fittings of London's underground art scene" and the Moberlys as "the Saatchis of alternative art" in the capital.
"What's unique about it is their ethos that anyone can exhibit there, from Gavin Turk to a student who just happens to have an interest in maps, or something," Thomas said. "It's totally unique. And now in its place we'll have another hotel, another shopping mall, another huge cinema."
"If you go there you realise that it's not like any other space in London," said Turk. "Shoreditch has become so commercialised, like the new West End, and there isn't really anywhere that runs like the Foundry does."
Darren Coxson, a co-founder of a welfare charity for London bike couriers, said his colleagues loved the Foundry for other reasons – namely that it offered so much space on its pavement outside to park their bicycles.
"We are quite a transient, international community and the non-corporate, artistic atmosphere fits with the courier lifestyle. For me, these modern developments completely take away the character of an area," he said.
But Squire and Partners said there was also "significant local support for the scheme, which will help regenerate this part of Shoreditch".
The Moberlys are looking for alternative premises, but are eager to stay close to the area's transport links and diverse community. "We'd like to dig our heels in and stay in this area," said Tracey Moberly. "It's not going to be easy, but it has to be possible."
First, however, they would like to talk to Tate Modern about the possibility of relocating the gallery's subterranean graffitied walls, where early murals by Banksy and New York street artists Faile have been scribbled over by countless art lovers, poetry fans and drinkers.
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February 3rd, 2010 Mark Brown
From cleaver-wielding suffragettes to a gun-toting delusional Edwardian, the National Portrait Gallery has played host to more than portraiture in its 150-year history
They are some of the forgotten stories from the last 150 years of the National Portrait Gallery: an Edwardian murder and suicide, a cleaver-wielding suffragette and a big rat problem.
The gallery announced today the posting online of an archive catalogue along with reports, letters and photographs which give a fascinating insight into some of the less well-known chapters in its history.
It comes after two years of cataloguing previously unseen material, a project that the gallery's archivist and records manager, Charlotte Brunskill, said they were about a third of the way through: "When I first started there was a 150-year backlog of stuff that hadn't been looked at."
One of the most dramatic stories in the gallery's history was a murder and suicide in the east wing in 1909. The newspapers were full of it, the Daily Express reporting on the well-dressed man, a 70-year-old from Hove "wearing a silk hat and a fur coat", who visited the gallery with his 58-year-old wife.
When they got to Room 27 the man pulled out a revolver and shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. Two young women on a day out fled in terror. It later turned out the man was "delusional with a persecution complex" believing he was being pursued by someone not identified.
An internal report on the incident includes the detail: "Three attendants remained after the gallery was closed to clear up in Room XXVII. Men were sent from HM Office of Works to remove by scraping such stains as remained in the floors after they had been washed over by the Gallery charwomen."
Many documents relate to an incident involving a suffragette in 1914. A woman who later gave her name as Anne Hunt, a "well-known militant" as it turned out, visited the gallery with a meat cleaver hidden in the folds of her dress. When she got to a Millais portrait of the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle – "I think they particularly didn't like him," said Brunskill – she smashed through the glass and ripped his face, shouting that it was "a protest against the re-arrest of Mrs Pankhurst."
A report said an attendant had seen the woman a few days earlier and taken her to be American "from the closeness with which she then examined the pictures". When she turned up again on the Friday he thought he must be wrong as "no American would have paid the 6d entrance fee twice over". She looked suspicious enough for him to follow and grapple with her when she attacked the Millais, possibly preventing further damage.
The gallery had no paintings during the second world war – they went secretly to Mentmore, a mansion in Buckinghamshire – but did have rats. They were everywhere, it seems, and their extermination was formalised in rat reports saying where they were killed and trapped, along with "killers' remarks". A typical entry might have read: "1 Trapped in library" - "drowned by Pitkin." Or another in the library that was "speared by Pittock with poker after it had escaped, with great excitement."
The gallery also said it had received a grant to catalogue the papers of the first director, Sir George Scharf, covering years when the gallery had no permanent home. It was originally in a private house in Great George Street, then South Kensington and briefly in Bethnal Green before moving in to its present home in 1896.
Some of the most interesting material are Scharf's pocket books packed full of drawings, including some from his visit to Blenheim palace and one of an infant Winston Churchill.
Brunskill said a lot of Scharf's diaries covered his obsessions with the weather and his health but he was also a committed campaigner against the "national disgrace" of the gallery not having a permanent home. Sadly he died shortly before the gallery moved to its home in St Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square.
The archive also touches on the 1960s and the groundbreaking Cecil Beaton exhibition of 1968 which the gallery clearly wanted as a happening, swinging event. It was more like a concept album and there was music and incense and it was all a bit too much for a Mr Steer from Barnes who wrote a letter of complaint.
The gallery's then new young director, Roy Strong, wrote back defending the show, but adding: "You may like to know that both the next two exhibitions will have no music or smell."
Posted in Art, Art and design, Internet, Museums, National Portrait Gallery, News, Painting, Technology, UK news, guardian.co.uk | Comments Off
February 2nd, 2010 Art and design: Art | guardian.co.uk
The Foundry pub and art venue in London, run by Tracey and Jonathan Moberly is to be demolished
Posted in Art, Culture, Editorial, Life and style, London, Pubs, UK news, guardian.co.uk | Comments Off